Essential Stories: Avengers #1

Alright, we’ve hit the sixth day of the Avengers 2 Theme Week. Having covered all of the new players, and the movie itself, I felt that it was a good idea to jump back and see where it all started. To do that we’ll be going all the way back, to the 1960s. The Avengers #1, for me, was lifted from the “Essential Avengers” Volume 1. It’s a black and white reprint of the original comic, along with the two dozen issues that followed the first release. Without further ado, Let’s get to it.

Twelve cents for a comic. Man I wish they could have
kept those prices.

The Avengers starts out with Loki. No, not the cool Tom Hiddleston version of the character. This guy’s more like…Starscream from the Transformers. He’s always shouting about how awesome he is, right before he gets his butt thoroughly kicked by big brother Thor. The most recent butt kicking landed him on the “Isle of Silence” a lonely Asgardian prison dimension. He’s stuck there, sort of. He can’t physically leave because of Odin’s enchantments but he could project his consciousness out into the cosmos. He sees Thor at his day job (yes at one point Thor had a day job) in his secret identity (yes at one point Thor had a secret identity) of Dr. Donald Blake. Loki gets super angry and starts searching the globe for something to take down his brother. He spots the Incredible Hulk out in the desert. He uses his illusion magic to trick Hulk into tackling a railroad bridge, just as a train was rounding the bend. Hulk, realizing his mistake, gets under the bridge and supports it as the train passes. (Yes, at this point in comic history, Hulk is actually a thinking, reasoning being) But nobody but Loki noticed the saving part of that little misadventure.

Police and Army guys start scrambling to try and find the Hulk, while Hulk’s old buddy Rick Jones and his friends try to get help from…other sources. They use a radio and try and get in touch with the one hero team that they think is capable of stopping the Hulk, the Fantastic Four. Unfortunately for them, or fortunately depending on who you ask, Loki predicted this and diverted the distress signal to Thor. Thor receives the call, transforms and flies off. Unbeknownst to Loki, however, super scientists Tony Stark (Iron Man) and the Hank Pym (Ant-Man) also pick up on the signal as well. Thor, Iron Man, Ant Man and Wasp converge at Rick’s house. Loki is understandably upset by this. He had planned for Thor verses the Hulk, not a super team verses the Hulk. So he switches to plan B. He creates another illusion of the Hulk and draws Thor’s attention. Thor throws his hammer at the illusion, realizes Loki’s connected to this business and flies back to Asgard to get some answers.

From a team where the lone female doesn't get
her name in the credits, to an all Woman Avengers.
Yeah, I'd say we've made some steps forward.

Meanwhile, Iron Man Ant-Man and Wasp track the Hulk down to a Circus. He was working there as a clown/strong man. They try to capture that Hulk, but the big lug keeps breaking out of whatever they try to ensnare him in. They chase him pretty much around the entire tristate area. In Asgard, Thor gets permission from papa Odin to see his brother on the Isle. He travels there and is almost immediately attacked by a Troll. Loki explains that the Troll’s grip is nearly unbreakable, and that his plan was to use the Troll’s superstrength to trap his brother and drag him down into the depths where he’ll be the Trolls’ slave forever. This rather stupid plan was foiled by Thor, who uses Mjolnir’s other function to shoot bolts of Lightning. The Troll bails. The brothers fight some more, Loki using illusions to keep the upper hand. Thor ends it by using the magnetic properties of his hammer to snatch his brother. Beaten by a Magnet, that’s a low point for Loki.

Back on Earth, the heroic trio had cornered Hulk in a car factory. Remember when America had a lot of those? They finally get the Hulk pinned down, just as Thor returns with Loki. They have their, ‘Whoops what a big misunderstand’ moment just as Loki uses his magic to make himself radioactive. I guess his plan was to force Hulk and Iron Man out of the room so he and Thor could keep fighting, which again, kind of a dumb plan since Thor is within Hammer hitting distance from his littler bro and immune to radiation.  But, before Thor could put that hammer down on Loki’s head, Ant-Man, Wasp, and a legion of ants fly in. They push Loki through a trap door and into a lead lined tank. Why he can’t escape from this I’ll never know. After that, on the suggestion of Ant-Man and Wasp, the heroes decide to start their own super team to handle situations that one hero alone couldn’t solve. Thus the Avengers were born.

When your master plan involves
having a monster hug your bro to
death, you aren't thinking hard enough.

Later issues would include such villains as the Space Phantom, that sow discord among the Avengers and make Hulk decide to bail on the team concept, Namor the Sub-Mariner, planning on destroying the surface world, Baron Zemo and the first incarnation of the Masters of Evil (Anti-Avengers), and baddies like the time-traveling Kang the Conqueror and even occasionally Doctor Doom. They also thaw out Captain America, so yeah, the Avengers is kind of a big deal.

Why is this issue essential? Duh, it started it all. The TV shows, the movies, modern comic team ups, can all trace their roots back to this story. Much like how the Flash saved comic superheroes by recreating interest in the genre, and how Fantastic Four was the first story of comic titan Marvel, the Avengers is the one that brought these radically different heroes together to make the radically unorthodox team of heroes work. Which has kind of always been Marvels business model, really. To think, we owe the Marvel Cinematic Universe to Loki. To Loki throwing a hissy fit and accidentally creating a team of the world’s Mightiest heroes. The best laid plans, am I right?

Fair warning to anyone that picks up the Essential Avengers or look up Avengers #1, it is very sixties in terms of writing. Characters explaining their plans and motivations while they’re doing enacting said plan, characters poorly narrating their own fights, the hammiest of hammy dialogue, Wasp being a very unashamed flirt with little to no other personality, and so on. Also, Iron Man is flying around in his Mark One armor. You know, that big tin can he threw together after being a prisoner for months? So yeah, there’s that to. Overall, it’s a decent story and one that I think any fan of Marvel should check out at some point. Next time, Update on Ultron.

 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/84/Avengers-1.jpg

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-Force

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Essential Stories: Deadpool vs. Carnage.

I can't honestly say who is going to cause
more damage.

Here we are, Deadpool vs. Carnage. Pure evil vs. a Goodish hero. In case you don’t know either character too well, there will be blood. Lots and lots of Blood. Pools of it. Also, no Deadpool will not be giving his two cents with this one, I sent him on a wild goose chase to keep him busy for a while. I can't have guests for every post, it'll get tiresome. Now, on with the show.

We begin at Kramer Penitentiary in New Jersey. Cletus Kasady, after his most recent run in with Spider-man, was sent here after the Carnage Suit repaired his brain damage. Why the suit didn’t do that when they were bonded before when they were in the Raft prison together, I’ll never know. Kasady’s identity as Carnage is well known, and in a classic prison bit, he gets shived by a fellow inmate that wanted to prove he’s bigger than Carnage. At the same time, the main mass of Carnage dies in its holding cell on Spider Island. It's implied that it felt Kasady's pain as he felt its, and where Kasady could be revived, no one thought or cared enough to figure out how to resuscitate liquid evil. Kasady feels the creature's pain while recovering in the prison’s hospital. He believes the main suit is dead, but he can “still hear the little one.”

This could have been the longest fight ever. If only.

In a research facility in New Mexico, a small sample of the Carnage suit breaks free of its holding, infects a doctor who’d been studying it, and then helps her kill her abusive husband before setting on its journey to Jersey. It jumps from host to host across the US, leaving a pretty clear trail of bodies pointing right to Kasady. At the same time, Kasady is murdered by his Psychiatrist, who reveals monologue style that he set the whole thing up, Kasady’s prison transfer and the stabbing, to lure the suit here and offer himself as the new host. When the suit arrives, it gives him the same attention the bombshell walking down the street gives the hooting construction workers. Which is to say, none at all. It rebonds with Kasady, who sits back up and reveals the suit can and has saved him from a lot worse than being dead for twenty minutes. He goes so far as to say that the suit needs him as much as he needs the suit, to feel complete. Kasady then continues the rampage the suit began, killing the shrink and the guy that shived him before planning to paint the US red. This is why you don’t pick fights with a guy whose alter ego is a homicidal monster, it never ends well.

Meanwhile in New York, Deadpool is bored and channel surfing. Mentally stitching the seemingly random bits of speech he hears while flipping, Deadpool has the epiphany that he’s the only nut job crazy enough to hunt down Carnage and make him go splat. Considering all he really needs to be motivated to do anything is the promise of making things go splat, this is a rare treat for him. Following a random trail that he believes to be a signs from the Universe, Deadpool tracks Carnage to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Carnage had set up shop in an abandoned Cul-de-sac. The two hack, slash, shoot, slash, stab and slash each other for a while before Carnage’s sound manipulating side-kick/girlfriend Shriek arrives to bail him out.  

Gloria, he's seen the light of madness
Wait...

Deadpool loses the trail, but picks it up again from a fat guy that had a similar epiphany after buying out a storage locker when Deadpool kept emergency supplies. That saying "The Universe works in mysterious ways," has never been more accurate or crazy. Deadpool surprises attacks the pair, in his classic craziness, using one of those giant crop harvesters. Carnage escapes again, and uses Deadpool’s “random universe clues” idea to lead him to the secret base of Mercury Team, a group of soldiers and their attack dog that use Symbiotes as emergency weapons. The team minus the dog are killed, Deadpool is chopped to bits, and the base is going to self-destruct.

Deadpool is saved by the dog, who has bonded with one of the Symbiotes, and lends Deadpool the other three. The suits stitch him back together, and seem to ignite him with new vigor. Symbiote empowered Deadpool is about as terrifying as you can imagine. And yet it makes a lot of sense, who better to control four separate entities at once than a man as wacked out nuts as Deadpool? I can’t think of anyone.

Deadpool, with help from the Symbiotes, tracks Carnage and his lady to Carrington Cottage Psychiatric Hospital. Some letters fell off, so the sign real “CAR N AGE PSYC O,” real subtle Universe. Apparently the conversation’s they’d had during their previous bouts planted a seed of doubt in Carnage’s mind about the purity of his random, chaotic movements and so he planned to grill fellow crazy’s to try to get his mojo back.

Awesome, and terrifying, but awesome.
His Symbiotes are Phage, Lasher,
Riot and Agony. Just a fun fact.

Using the fact that he’s gotten Carnage pretty weirded out with his “there is no Chaos” talk, plus the Symbiote enhancements, plus the dog, plus his own unique brand of crazy, Deadpool is able to match Carnage blow for blow. He further infuriates Carnage by claiming that the two of them are connect in mutual insanity. Let’s call it the Crazy Force. Flash and the speedster of DC have the Speed Force, Deadpool and the nuts of Marvel have the Crazy Force. Universe in harmony. Deadpool then tricks Carnage into attacking and horribly injuring Shriek.

In a strange closing, Carnage goes into a cell in the Psychiatric Hospital, shuts the door, and just sits there muttering to himself. No doubt trying to find a way in his own crazy mind to discredit Deadpool’s claims and become an agent of Chaos again. Meanwhile, Deadpool bids farewell to the dog and Four Symbiotes before vowing to hunt down another insane supervillain. He’s found his calling.

This story arch is rather new, it was only published earlier this year, so you’re probably wondering why I’m calling it an Essential Story. Because it just is. It is one of the better stories explaining how a psycho like Deadpool can be considered a hero, and how his unique brand of crazy can be a superpower as useful as his healing factor. Plus when you break it down further, it becomes the story of the resident psycho of the Spider-man franchise vs. the resident psycho of the X-men franchise. If there is a better way to do a Spider-man vs. X-men story, without making Spider-man seem Batman level overpowered, I don’t want to see it. It also serves as a good way to explain what the heck Carnage is now doing, without doing the separating him from the Symbiote story for the hundredth time. He’s now trapped in a philosophical prison, trying to use the reason of crazy to prove crazy and random do in fact exist. Deadpool, he can even break minds that were broken from the start. Brilliance. If you’re curious about Deadpool, Carnage, or just the insanity of Marvel, I recommend picking it up, my summary really doesn’t do it enough justice. Next time, Man-Bat, Batman’s other Jekyll and Hyde bad guy. 

 http://www.comicvine.com/forums/comic-book-preview-1988/preview-deadpool-vs-carnage-1-of-4-1549154/

 http://www.comicvine.com/images/1300-3675800

 http://www.comicvine.com/forums/comic-book-preview-1988/first-look-deadpool-vs-carnage-1-1542037/

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Essential Stories: The Killing Joke

It's hard not to with a gun to my gut...

Originally I was going to do a review of the new DC animated film Batman: Assault on Arkham, but given the untimely death of Robin Williams earlier this week it felt a little wrong. A little info, despite Batman’s name over the title the movie is focused on the Suicide Squad, a group of villains “hired” by the US Government for black ops missions. I might being overly sensitive about the situation, but I’d rather be overly sensitive to Robin Williams death than overly callous.

SO, what am I doing instead? I decided to roll out a new segment entitled Essential Stories. In it I’ll be giving a synopsis of the story and why it is so important I’m calling it Essential. And, since I’m working on a Batman theme of late I figured it would be best to work with one of the most tragic titles, “The Killing Joke.”

Pre-Joker, true or not, it's a sad story.

I touched on this one earlier with the Joker Villain Profile, but here are the bigger points. It opens with Batman visiting Joker in Arkham. He’s there on the pretense of convincing the Joker that it isn’t too late for them to change things. That he believes that one day he and the Joker are going to go head to head, leaving one or both of them in the ground. Before getting too far into his speech, Batman realizes that the Joker is in fact a fake. After voicing his “displeasure” at the guy helping the Joker escape Batman sets about tracking him down.

Joker, meanwhile, gets his hands on an amusement park. Afterwards, he makes a surprise house call to Commissioner Gordon’s place. He shoots Gordon’s daughter (And Batgirl) Barbara, crippling her for the next two decades, and kidnaps Gordon. Side note, I never got that point. Batman’s back was shattered by Bane and he was back at being Batman in almost no time. Batgirl gets shot through the spine, and she gets crippled for twenty years. Messed. Up.

The Clown Prince's most human moment
in decades.

Back on task. You’re probably wondering, what is Joker doing this time around? To put it simply, he wants to prove a point. That one bad day is all that it takes to completely ruin a man’s life and sanity. (Kind of what he was doing at the end of the Dark Knight.) SO, once Gordon was in his clutches Joker put him, naked, on a hellish roller coaster. He sang a demented song about how easy it is to just let go of his insanity while showing Gordon pictures of Barbara bleeding to death on the carpet.

Batman finally tracks him down and he and Joker have a bareknuckle beat down. Batman tries to reason with the Joker, losing battle if I ever heard one, even offering to help the Joker get a handle on his madness. The Joker answers with a “joke.”

It goes “See, there were these two guys in a Lunatic Asylum. And one night they decide they don’t like living in an Asylum any more. They decide they’re going to escape. SO, like, they get up onto the roof, and there, just across this narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away in the moonlight… Stretching away to Freedom. Now, the first guy, he jumps right across with no problem. But his friend, his friend daredn’t make the Leap. Y’see… Y’see, he’s afraid of falling. So then the first guy has an idea... he says “Hey, I have my flashlight with me! I’ll shine it across the gap between the building. You can walk along the Beam and Join me. But the second Guy shakes his head. He suh-says… He says “Wh-what do you think I am? Crazy? You’d turn it off when I was half way across.” The story ends with Joker and Batman laughing together in the rain.

Most. Disturbing. Laugh. Ever.

Inter spliced between the scenes of Joker’s plan we see his origin. Or, perhaps, more accurately one of his possible pasts. The Joker makes it clear throughout the story how much he detests memory. The story goes that Joker was a former lab assistant turned comedian. The problem is, he’s not very funny. Joker tries to get rich quick helping the Red Hood Mob with a break in. His wife died in a fire earlier that day, and he took the unfortunate dip in the ACE chemicals.

This story is an Essential simply because it gives us a unique look into the Joker’s psyche. He makes it clear throughout that he detests his own memories and does his best to not think about it as much as possible. That is perhaps the one thing that makes me doubt the truth behind this origin. Perhaps aspects are true, other’s not. The level of Joker’s insanity has never really been revealed so its hard to tell how much he knows about himself. When you say, “If I have a past, I’d rather it be multiple choice,” any story about his past should be taken with a grain of salt.

The flashback scenes are done in black and white, aside from Red. Anything red is bright and vibrant. It makes things feel very eerie and surreal.

JUST LIKE MY MIND!

Yes, Joker, just like your mind.

Why wasn’t I asked to do this story?

Because you’d belittle aspects. Now get in the corner with Deadpool until I need you.

But-

SCOOT! Now, the story is a dark and twisted look into the Joker’s dark and twisted psyche. We see him at his cruelest, and also at his most pathetic point. Sure, in his next story he’s right back into his psychotic Clown Prince of Crime that we know and loath, but I think this story does help to remind us that no matter how evil and twisted the Joker is, there was a time when he was relatively normal. I’d encourage anyone interested in the Joker to read it. Next time… Why are we making all of the X-men American?

Joker takes off the Hood for the first time. The red tears are a nice touch.

 http://www.howtolovecomics.com/2014/07/25/batman-week-review-batman-killing-joke/

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman:_The_Killing_Joke

 http://sequart.org/magazine/20953/thats-not-funny-alan-moore-tragic-joker/

http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/File:The-killing-joke-joker.jpg

 http://www.comicvine.com/articles/the-killing-joke-re-enacted/1100-143753/